No More Loving Man Than Charles
by DaniNatureGirl313
Summary: A song-fic mostly from Erik's pov. Takes place near the end of "DOFP", when the two leader's older selves are about to die.


**No More Loving Man than Charles**

_**AN: I came across this song on YouTube recently, & I absolutely fell in-love w/ it. Thinking over it again reminded me of the last moments of "DOFP", when older Erik & Charles are about to die. Patrick & Ian have such expressive faces, I really didn't have to do too much imagining for what their characters could've been thinking. It's not all gloom-and-doom, though. There is a little ray of hope at the very end. Hope you all like it.**_

_**Here he lies before me, my friend for many years.**_

Erik couldn't fight the scream that came as the beam tore through his body, knocking him to the ground. Blood was pouring out, and his legendary energy was rapidly draining away. As he sat propped up against a temple wall, his silvery-blue eyes met the dark sapphire orbs of his brother-in-all-but-blood. He couldn't believe, that after all he had done to the world and to the man before him, Charles never turned away. Even in their most conflictive of times, he always knew Charles still cared for him. Charles was always there. It had broken his heart to watch the telepath die, knowing deep down that it was his fault. To have him return through the body of his comatose twin was a great relief. It gave them a chance to finally reconcile for good. Unfortunately thanks to the new-and-improved sentinels, in their case, "for good" turned out to be not so long after all.

Meanwhile, Charles was having his own moment of introspection. If it hadn't been for the man on the ground in front of him, he'd have stayed wrapped up in the life of a typical collage frat boy. Moira led him to the millisecond when he jumped from that boat: "There's someone else out there!" How true those words were, in more ways than just one. Meeting Erik, learning the tragic intricacies of his life…that's what made him who he was. It introduced him to the bigger picture, gave him a cause to fight for. In fact, he'd go as far as to say that without Erik 'Magneto' Lehnsherr, there wouldn't be 'Professor X'. They owed each other so much.

_**He saved me from the water.**_

_**Now, I'm drowning in my tears**_

It echoed across his mind like a long-forgotten song, a splash of water and two arms wrapping around him to pull him to the surface, the exact moment they first met: "My name is Charles Xavier", "You were in my head! How did you do that", "You have your tricks! I have mine! I'm like you! Just calm your mind", "I thought I was alone", "You're not alone. Erik-" The aging metal-bender looked up again when he heard a heavy sigh. The dark-haired, cheekily-smiling image in his mind was replaced by a weathered, physically and emotionally exhausted-looking face. The hair was gone, the freckles over his nose had faded, and the wrinkles on his forehead had deepened. A tiny smile quirked up at the corner of Charles's mouth, a mere hint of what used to be there. He knowingly whispered the same words he'd spoken so long ago to his friend, "You're not alone." They tried to keep their facial expressions somewhat neutral, but thin rivers of tears were trickling down both of their faces.

_**Grief is but a poor word for everything I feel.**_

_**There can be no greater love.**_

Erik's breathing was becoming more and more labored by the second. He knew he didn't have long, even if he took the sentinels out of the equation. Charles did, too. It was true for both of them. There was still so much they had yet to say, and neither fully realized it until this precise moment.

_**He was there to guide me through the follies of my age.**_

_**Always there beside me, everything forgave.**_

"If you know you can do it, then you're not challenging yourself", "Try telling it to face us." A wistful expression crossed Erik's face. Those were the days. After briefly losing his powers, he'd gone back to the mansion. To say everyone there was shocked to see him would've been the biggest of understatements, but Hank McCoy knew why he was there. When they silently walked into the backyard, the furry genius had told him, "He never moved it, you know." "Moved what?" Hank didn't reply, simply jerking his thumb in the direction of a very familiar-looking satellite dish. For all these years, he'd kept a miniature version of it, a model he'd created to be a reminder of the lesson it represented. Looking at it brought him back to that happy time, even the tenser moments. Especially that last chess match the night before Cuba: "Are you really so naïve as to think they won't battle their own extinction, or is it arrogance", "I'm sorry?" That question was no apology, but a dare for him to continue, and he knew it. Little tidbits like that were as close as they got to real arguments back then. But as always, Charles had brushed it aside. He wanted to keep things calm so they could continue their game.

_**Held me as a father, showing me the way.**_

_**There can be no greater love.**_

Erik thought back to the satellite dish again. He could tell that Charles was doing the same. Even without relying on the telepath's powers, both men had learned to read each other so well, it was borderline-spooky at times. He recalled how his friend had asked permission to go into his mind, retrieving the Hanukah celebration that once brought him such happiness: "That was a beautiful memory, Erik. Thank you for sharing", "I didn't know I still had that." That moment was pure Charles Xavier: a guiding force for everyone, even those who most believe didn't deserve such caring tutelage. He'd gently encouraged Erik to find "the point between rage and serenity", patting him on the back and laughing with him when the goal was accomplished. That short span of time, just about twenty minutes long, taught him so much about life in general. It was also one of the few times, since his mother's murder, that he felt like he had a real family again. He loved Charles for that, and he regretted never telling him so.

_**No fear did he have before the storm.**_

_**The fate of others was his only thought.**_

As the original Blackbird crashed on that beach so long ago, Erik had been amazed that Charles managed to keep his cool. He didn't panic about getting hurt, but he did make sure the others were okay. He barked out orders like an old-fashioned general: "Hank, level the bloody plane!" Erik had used his body as a cushion, making sure his friend wasn't injured when the plane finally did hit the sand. Both could've been hurt anyway, but Charles didn't care. He'd immediately run over to Raven's seat, unbuckling her strap and asking if she was okay. Later, after Shaw was dead, it happened again. Charles had practically begged Erik not to send the missiles back: "There are thousands of men on those ships! Good, honest, innocent men!" When the fighting between them escalated, and Moira instinctively started shooting, Charles remained in protective mode. A solid right hook to the jaw was the answer he got, but it didn't stop him. He knew Erik would become distracted at some point, and he didn't want the metal-bender to miss a beat and get shot. As he stood up, he couldn't have known that one of those bullets would hit him a millisecond later, taking out his legs. Even as he was being cradled like an infant, he still wouldn't give up: "We're brothers, you and I. We want the same thing", "I'm sorry…but we do not." It was courageous enough to stand up to an enemy, but greater still to stand up to someone you cared for. More tears began pouring down Erik's now-wrinkled face, an apologetic wince flashing in his eyes at the memory.

_**And though it was the way to certain darkness, **_

_**To save my life, he gave his own.**_

Erik would never forget the moment when he watched Jean Grey's alter-ego, Phoenix, kill Charles. The telepath had been trying to calm his former student down so she wouldn't rip her childhood home apart, and subsequently harm the other people currently in it. This included Erik, though that fact went unspoken. He was trying to soothe Jean, to bring her back from the brink his friend had pushed her to. Erik had purposefully goaded the redhead into angrily losing control. He'd done that often throughout the years, undermining Charles's efforts to bring more students to the institute, trying to turn the meetings into recruitments for the Brotherhood. That was the second time he'd watched his best friend get hurt, and both times, albeit indirectly, it had been his fault. His throat had gone terribly raspy from his repeated screams of "No, Charles!" He remembered the small smile of calm acceptance on the telepath's face as he was vaporized, the same smile he was sporting now, ironically enough.

_**For my life, he gave his own.**_

_**And these words are writ in stone where he lies.**_

It was a windy day when he'd crouched over his old friend's grave, adding yet another white rose to the bunch already there, honoring the memory of the proud Yorkshire man. Erik was realistic enough to know he wouldn't be remembered as lovingly as Charles was. He'd done nothing to deserve it, anyway, nothing truly worthy of honor. To the rest of the world, 'Magneto' was little more than a terrorist bully. Sure, he had a tragic life many would be sympathetic to, but that was no excuse. He'd become the mutant version of Malcolm X, or even of, dare he even think the man's name, Hitler. He was Shaw Jr. He was…he was the boogeyman. Charles had tried so hard over the years to bring him back to redemption, to return to those happier days before President Kennedy's address, when the mansion was a bubble of safety and laughter. He recalled his own words from that time: "Peace was never an option", except it was. It really, really was. He'd just been too stubborn to see it, and he'd gone about getting in in the most wrong way possible. The tombstone had read, "Charles Xavier: Father, Teacher, Leader." It was a perfect epitaph, and yet not. Those three titles seemed far too simple to encompass a man as great as the telepath had been. He was so much more than that. He deserved so much more. And how did Erik repay him for that? Though he was Jewish, he did know many passages from the Christian Bible. Several of them ran through his brain as he stared at the cold, mottled-grey marble, ones he wished he could've personally chiseled there. They all came back to him again as the fire-fight raged around them. Charles smiled back, stretching down his hand to grasp Erik's. Their moment of true resolution had come, but sadly too late.

"_**Greater love hath no man than this,**_

_**That a man lay down his life for his friend."**_

"_**Greater love hath no man than this,**_

_**That a man lay down his life for his friend."**_

Logan was writhing in pain on the altar, Kitty was panicking as she tried to keep his consciousness in the past, Ororo and Bobby had just been killed, and the others were fighting desperately to delay the sentinels as long as they possibly could. In the middle of all that, the two mutant leaders had finally found peace, which only one of them had believed was possible until now. Their grips on each other's hands tightened a bit as Erik tearfully said, "All those years spent fighting each other, Charles…" "I know, old friend. I know." In that instant, said years melted away, and they briefly saw each other in the same way as they were that night off the Miami coast. As the flames inched steadily closer and began to consume them, they could only hope their grand plan worked, and they'd wake up in a very different world from this one. They didn't know whether or not it would be the afterlife, though.

"_**Greater love hath no man than this,**_

_**That a man lay down his life for his friend."**_

As Erik came to, he could've sworn he heard birds singing. Sunlight peeked in through a nearby window. As he rolled over in bed, he admired the rainbow of colors the stained glass sent onto the wood-paneled walls of his room. Groaning and rubbing the gluey feeling out of his eyes, he used his powers to call over his watch from his dresser, checking the time. He had a class shortly, where he'd teach the children to speak his native language. An hour later, as he walked to his classroom, Hank walked past him and gave a soft "good morning." As he turned around, he thought he saw Logan go into Charles's office. What they could've had to discuss, he had no idea. The poor man looked terribly confused, about as confused as Erik _felt_ in that moment. He knew he'd had the strangest dream last night. But for some reason, try as he might, he just couldn't remember it…


End file.
